


Roo

by nagi_schwarz



Series: The Oppenheimer Effect [60]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 05:21:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7562026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate Multiverse, Rodney McKay + Any, Rodney's cat gets out, and he doesn't come back alone."</p><p>In which Oppenheimer gets a pet of his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roo

“Rodney,” John said, “did you get a dog?”  
  
Rodney, phone tucked against his shoulder, squinted at his computer screen. If only Dr. Naoe didn’t keep such weird hours, Rodney could have gotten started on this issue earlier, which meant he could have finished earlier and gone home at a reasonable hour and been in time for whatever Evan was cooking at Casa Atlantica that night.  
  
“What? No. Why?”  
  
“Because there’s a dog in our house.”  
  
Rodney turned away from the computer. “Say again?”  
  
“Oppie went out through the cat door, like he does, around the time I left for school this morning. And now I’m home, and there’s a dog curled up on Oppie’s cat bed.”  
  
“What kind of dog? Where’s Oppie? Is he hurt?”  
  
“Oppie’s fine. He’s not hurt at all, just curled up on the washing machine above the cat bed. Um...I’m not sure what kind of dog. Looks like a mutt,” John said. “And I have no idea how it - she? I think - got into the house, because she’s too big for the cat door. She’s black and white like a border collie, but her fur’s a lot sleeker, and her tail looks kinda like a husky tail. She has a collar but the tag has a Nebraska number and address and the voicemail greeting was one of those generic ones, so I think she belongs to someone who moved or she’s far, far from home. I left a voicemail just in case.”  
  
“Do you need me to come home?” Rodney asked.  
  
“No,” John said, and then, “what the hell?”  
  
“John? Is everything all right?”  
  
“I gotta go. Love you. Bye.”  
  
And John hung up.  
  
Rodney swore. He fired off an email to Sam, promising to tackle Naoe’s work tomorrow, logged off his computer, grabbed his keys and jacket, and dashed for the elevator.  
  
When he pulled into the driveway, he saw Cam’s van, Evan’s car, JD’s car, and John’s car all parked in their usual spots (Cam’s garage having been taken over by Tyler’s fixer-upper). When he went into Casa Atlantica through the garage door, it was empty. So he headed over to Casa Atlantica Too, and everyone was gathered in the kitchen.  
  
Staring at Oppie, who was sitting on the washing machine and giving himself a fastidious tongue-bath while the mutt dog lay in Oppie’s soft cat bed, panting and gazing up at the humans surrounding her.  
  
“What’s going?” Rodney demanded. “What’s the emergency? John, why did you hang up on me?”  
  
John said, “Watch this. Hey, Oppie, you want some catnip?”  
  
Oppie paused in his tongue bath and mewled.  
  
The dog launched to her feet, ducked artfully past Tyler’s legs and Cam’s chair and into the kitchen.  
  
Rodney watched, horrified - oh, the hygiene disaster! - as the dog went to the kitchen table, used her body to push a chair against the counter, used the chair to climb onto the counter, and then reared up on her hind legs to nudge open a cupboard with her nose, snag the baggie of catnip delicately in her teeth, then leap off the counter and trot back into the laundry room to present the baggie to Oppie.  
  
“...What the hell just happened?” Rodney asked.  
  
Evan retrieved the bag of catnip and put it back in the cupboard, moved the chair back into place.  
  
“It gets better,” Tyler said gleefully. “Hey Oppie, you want a fish snack?”  
  
The fish snacks, Rodney knew, were kept high out of reach, where not even Oppie could jump for them.  
  
Oppie mewled, and the dog, tail wagging, trotted into the kitchen, nudged the chair back over to the counter, and climbed up onto the counter. And waited. Oppie gave his paw a few more licks, then jumped down from the washing machine, strolled into the kitchen, and jumped onto the counter. Then he mewled, and the dog crouched down. Oppie climbed onto the dog’s back, mewled again, and the dog straightened up.  
  
And Oppie jumped onto the top of the cupboard, right where the fish snacks were kept.  
  
“Oppie!” Rodney hissed. “Get down from there.”

Oppie didn’t deign to descend until he had the sack of fish snacks held firmly in his teeth. He allowed Rodney to wrestle the sack of snacks away from him, and Tyler was dispatched to climb up onto the counter to put them back.  
  
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Cam asked.  
  
“That this dog has been getting up to who knows what in our house, putting her dirty paws everywhere?” Rodney demanded.  
  
“I think,” John said, “Oppie went out and brought himself home his very own pet dog.”  
  
Rodney recognized that glint in John’s eye. It was the same glint he’d gotten when he first laid eyes on that death-trap of a motorcycle he rode around on when he was going out alone.  
  
“No. Absolutely not. We are _not_ keeping this dog.”  
  
“But Rodney,” John began, and then his cell phone rang. He stared down at the anonymous number flashing on the screen, then answered it. “This is John Sheppard. Oh, you got my message. What’s your dog’s name?” He frowned. “Roo?”  
  
But the dog perked up at the ridiculous name, tail wagging even more.  
  
“Let’s arrange a neutral drop-off location,” John said. He gave the person on the other end of the line directions to The Tree and a promise to be there in fifteen minutes. “Looks like this dog has an owner after all. Girl sounded pretty worried.” He crouched down and scratched Roo behind the ears, and she leaned into his touch, panting happily.  
  
“Let’s go give Roo back to her rightful owners,” Rodney said. “And then I’m going to disinfect the kitchen, and John, you need to do a perimeter check and figure out how this dog got into the house.”  
  
John snagged Roo’s collar and hauled her out to Cam’s van, and everyone piled inside - including Oppie, who rode on Tyler’s shoulders - and to the park they went. Roo seemed content to sprawl all over JD, who patted her fur absently, and when they got to the park, someone was already waiting beneath the tree, holding a leash.  
  
“Roo!”  
  
Roo took off running across the grass and bowled her owner over with much enthusiasm. When Rodney and the others reached the tree, Roo was sitting on a little girl, who was laughing beneath Roo’s enthusiastic tongue bath and saying, “No, not the nose, that’s like being water-boarded.”  
  
JD stiffened at her words, and Cam curled a hand over his hip.  
  
“Looks like she is yours,” John said.  
  
The girl managed to fend Roo off long enough to sit up, and on closer inspection, she was older than Rodney’s first estimation, maybe in middle school. She had dark skin and dark hair in pigtails, glasses, and was wearing denim overalls over a faded t-shirt.  
  
“Thank you so much for finding her. She pushed her doghouse toward the fence and used it to climb out of the yard.”  
  
“She is very smart,” John said.  
  
“Almost disturbingly so,” Evan murmured.  
  
The girl clipped the leash to Roo’s collar and climbed to her feet. And then she said, “Oh, hey, Tyler, right?”  
  
Tyler ducked his head, and if his skin were lighter, he’d have been blushing. “Hey, uh, Brenda.”  
  
Brenda reached out, and Oppie leaned toward her for a caress. Traitor.  
  
“You two know each other?” Cam asked.  
  
Tyler nodded. “Yeah. We sit here under The Tree sometimes and study together after school.”  
  
Rodney ratcheted his estimate of Brenda’s age up a little further.  
  
Brenda smiled and offered a hand to Cam. “Hi! You must be Tyler’s dad. I’m Brenda Pryor. My family moved here from Nebraska a while back.”  
  
“Hello, Brenda,” Cam said cautiously, shaking her hand. “I see Tyler’s told you about us. Shame he’s never told us about you.”  
  
Evan frowned. “You moved in the middle of the school year?”  
  
“Over the Christmas break,” Brenda said. “I had to spend every spare moment helping Mom and Dad remodel the house, and they just barely got done over Spring Break, so now I can actually go do fun things after school.”  
  
“Like study,” JD said slowly.

“Study out in the open air with the nice weather.” Brenda smiled.

Rodney narrowed his eyes at her. “What grade are you in?”

“I’m a senior, same as Tyler.”

Rodney adjusted his age estimation of her upward a little further.

Brenda jumped when her cell phone buzzed. She checked the screen. “I’m sorry - I have to go. Thank you so much for finding Roo! I owe you one. See you, Tyler.” She fluttered her fingers, then turned and headed away, Roo trotting beside her.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Cam clapped Tyler on the hip. “I think she likes you. She’s cute.”

“Bit irresponsible with her dog,” JD grumbled.

Rodney huffed. “You can do better, Tyler.”

Tyler cast him a wounded look, and John said, “She seems like a very nice girl. If you like her, you should ask her out on a real date, not just sitting around at the park doing homework.”

“Better yet,” Evan said, “invite her over to dinner.”

Tyler ducked his head again, not-blushing. “Um. Maybe.”

“The thing to do,” Cam said, “is ask her to prom. You went stag with Tina and Sasha last year.”

“We should discuss this another day,” Rodney said. “I need to go home and clean my kitchen and celebrate the fact that we did not end up with an extra pet today.”

Tyler smiled up at John. “Brenda says Roo is available for play dates.”

John lit up, and Rodney said, “No.”

But he was unsurprised, the next day, when he got home from work, that he found Oppie sprawled on the couch, surrounded by shredded baggie plastic, catnip, and fish snacks, and Roo asleep on the carpet beside the couch, and the kitchen furniture rearranged.


End file.
